Sunday, February 28, 2010

Atmiya Vidya Mandir students on the top of the world with positions 1, 2, 3 and 10 in World Maths Day Practice Session

End of the Day Update

All the students from std 1 - 9 showed great enthusiasm and did keen competition with other students from around the world.

By the end of today's practice session, students of Atmiya Vidya Mandir hold positions 1, 2, 3 and 10 in the class wise category of ages 9-13 in Hall of Fame in World Maths Day practice session. Please find the rankings chart below:



We congratulate all the students and ask them to keep these positions on the day of the competition.

All the Best! You all are the Best!

Atmiya Vidya Mandir in Hall of Fame of World Maths Day Practice Session

World Maths Day is the world’s largest online mathematics event where students compete in real time against other students from around the world. In this event, the main focus is on basic mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and number series. The students are awarded the points based on speed and accuracy of mental arithmetic.

The actual event will be held on 2nd March and 3rd March, 2010. About 60 students of Atmiya Vidya Mandir’s are participating in the event. Currently the site is open for practice session and the students of Atmiya Vidya Mandir are currently occupying the top notch positions. Our few students are holding the flag of India and Atmiya Vidya Mandir.

Atmiya Vidya Mandir class wise rank in Hall of Fame of the World Maths Day practice sessions as of now is:
In age group 5 – 8, our class teams are at position # 12 and 43.





In age group 9 – 13, our class teams are at position # 3, 6 and 7




Individual student positions in Hall of Fame of the World Maths Day practice sessions as of now are:

Age group 5 - 8

World Rank# 36 :: Name -> Kishan Khanpara :: Score -> 3768 :: Std -> 3rd



World Rank# 51 :: Name -> Smit Lad :: Score -> 2889 :: Std -> 3rd



Age group 9 - 13

World Rank# 47 :: Name -> Suraj Patel :: Score -> 4391 :: Std -> 8th A



World Rank# 85 :: Name -> Pranshu Savani :: Score -> 3778 :: Std -> 8th A

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Champions: The Surat Inter School Table Tennis Tournament 2009-2010

We feel proud to announce that the under 17 boys team of Atmiya Vidya Mandir won the Surat Inter School Table Tennis Tournament on 23rd Feb 2010 which was organized by Delhi Public School, Surat.

About 20 schools from the area participated in this tournament and the following students of Atmiya Vidya Mandir came out to be the champions of the tournament:

  1. Saurabh Biyani           Std 9th
  2. Anand Kalawadiya       Std 9th
  3. Manav Patel               Std 9th
In the Pre-quarter finals the AVM team beat the team of Ryan International School by 3-0, in the quarter final round we beat the Sanskar Bharti School by 3-2, in the semi-final round we beat Delhi Public School by 3-1 and in the finals we beat Bhulka Vihar School by 3-2.

After winning the championship the team said, that they would not have been successful without the hard work and training provided to them by all the sports teachers at the school and especially Bhaumik Sir who is their table tennis coach.


On behalf of the Atmiya Vidya Mandir family we heartily congratulate the winning team and their coach.

Chak De AVM!

Submitted By:
AVM Sports Teachers

Learning for Life

Hungry birds have always been a problem for farmers. Sometimes the birds eat so much corn or wheat that a farmer and his family would not have enough food to last through the winter. So, for more than 3000 years, farmers have been making scarecrows.

But the ones made here at Atmiya Vidya Mandir were erected by the class of 4th division with the help of their Gujarati Language teacher. These students have a poetry on scarecrows in their coursework/syllabus and for the introduction of the poem their teacher built a scare crow in the neem garden on the campus. When the children saw the scarecrow they said it would be very difficult for somebody to build one, but were positively challenged by their teacher to build their own. Under the guidance of the teacher the students together built the first prototype. The students were then divided into teams who created many other such Scarecrows. It seemed that the little champions erected these bogeyman's to protect their beloved neem trees.

Confucius once said 'You hear and you forget you see and you remember you do and you understand'.

Each child in this class now remembers the poem and even if they forget the lines, they have understood the meaning and importance of scarecrows for life.


Learning at Atmiya Vidya Mandir happens round the clock. A typical Science class for 8th standard on a particular day began at 9:54 pm on the terrace of the new school building. 42 students of class 8th with their teacher observed the moon through a telescope magnified at 160 X zoom and experienced beautiful craters on the moon. The curiosity of the students then rose to such an extent that they wanted to explore more and some said they wanted to find their own K-Pax. To challenge these inspirers the science teacher gave them a project and asked them to select any celestial object in the solar system - planet, satellite, comet, asteroid anything in the solar system and asked them to inform him why they were interested in that object. But he also made them think by asking a critical thinking question that if their research team is funded by our dear Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh with Rs 10,000 crore for their project what would they do?
All the teams did impressive research work and some of their original ideas are as follows:
  1. Setting up an Internet hub on Mars with a telecommunication satellite hovering over Mars.
  2. Sending plants and insect samples on Mars and see how life if any is affected on the planet.
  3. Coating their Venus Exploration spacecraft with platinum so the sulphuric acid clouds of Venus does not bother their mission.
  4. Young authors - this group started writing fiction - they said they went to Mercury and found a dead alien which they brought back to earth and are now going to spend the money on doing research on the alien. (X-files Returns - what will Scully and Moulder do?)
  5. Creating drilling equipment for their Mission to Europa (one of Jupiter's many moons) so that they could drill easily through the frozen surface and will check if there is life under the ice sheets there!
It is said that Ye can lead a man to university but you cannot make a man think. But can you say the same about the children of Atmiya Vidya Mandir?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Republic Day celebration at AVM



Republic Day celebration at AVM

In a befitting tribute to the nation on the occasion of 60th Republic Day celebrations, the management staff and students organized a simple but a meaningful ceremony to salute the nation and express solidarity with it as its being continuously tested, trying to grapple with severe problems of internal and international tensions, at the same time keeping the economy afloat progressing in the wake of global recession.

The threats of regionalism, linguistic divisions, external aggressions and terrorist bloodbath are looming large over the Indian nation and the need of the hour is to confront them with courage, upholding the dignity of the citizens, at the same time keeping the country united, as was said by a staff member to the gathering.

The management representative, Mr. Haresh Patel further urged the members of the Atmiya Vidya Mandir family to take a pledge to spread the message of "Atmiyata" and contribute towards making India energy efficient by saving energy.

The ceremony concluded with the school vibrating with the spirit of patriotism through heart rendering patriotic songs sung by the school choir group represented by students and led by Mr. Somnath Mitra, their mentor and Music instructor at the school.

Report by: Rupashree Asthana

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Creativity is "Possible"


In modern age, creativity has its unique space and importance literally everywhere. Corporate houses and most industries have now accepted that creativity in their business is the way forward. Most of the employers want their staff to be creative. To be able to achieve that staff members have training, workshops, seminars on creativity. Even education system is also no exception to that (which is a very good thing).


But the question is; what is creativity? Plenty of efforts have been made to define creativity. But the most accepted definition comes from the father of ‘creativity’, Mr. Edward De Bono. As per him Creativity is all about generating alternatives. Creativity enables us to be able to acquire more options or solutions for a particular problem.


Creativity tells us that there is always an alternate course of actions. There are always more answers to a question, there are always different approaches to a problem.


Now the million dollar question is how to become creative. What could be the first step? As far as I am concerned, it is the sense of possibility which opens up the door for creativity. You must have been thinking, is it some language teachers trying to solve a math or a scientific problem? But before you make any conclusions, hear me out.


Most of us would consider scientists, mathematicians, painters; sculptures and musicians creative in their work. So do you think any of their work could have been done without them thinking it is possible? Thinking possibilities is a necessary skill to become creative. Most of the people stress on critical thinking which only teaches us what is wrong and what is right. But for being creative, critical thinking skills are not enough. To generate new ideas one needs to be thinking about the different possibilities.


In the field of math, proof is very integral part of the process. But at times proof is nothing but the lack of imagination.’ A’ causes ‘B’. We get the proof for it and once we prove it, everyone has to accept it and we are very happy. But there could be more reasons for B to happen. Unless you think there is a possibility for an alternate solution, there is no way you can come up with the alternate solutions. If Wright brothers did not think that we can travel in air we would not have air planes today. I know it was a very boring example but it is very fundamental and no one can deny that.


How can I conclude my article without talking about this topic in context of education? Being a teacher, sometimes it becomes very frustrating when our students do not understand the simplest of the things. No matter how many times we teach them the same topic it may seem impossible to teach them and we choose to believe that the student is dull and doesn’t make efforts to learn. What can we do? Well I believe we need to develop the skill of thinking possibilities. Unless we believe it is possible to make students understand, we cannot come up with alternate explanations. That is what I call being a creative teacher. So next time someone asks you how to become creative, just tell them it is “POSSIBLE”.